Smartphones can connect two people anywhere in the world, assuming both of them have service. Stumbling into an immensely large crowd of people all trying to use their phones at the same time or wandering into a patch of land that a carrier doesn't cover can instantly sever someone's connection to the outside world. This is typically inconvenient, but sometimes it can be life-threatening. That's why goTenna isn't just a potentially cool piece of upcoming tech, it may end up being a necessary one.

An image of what looked to be a Shield-like controller at the FCC last month had rumors swirling about a successor to NVIDIA's hybrid touchscreen-gamepad system. Well, it looks like that may have only been part of the picture because @evleaks has just dropped a shot of what is claimed to be the Shield tablet. Take a look.

This device is remarkably similar to NVIDIA's Tegra Note reference hardware in regard to design language, so we're clearly looking at something they've created.

Raise your hands if you're excited about Guardians of the Galaxy. Now put them back down, because this is a text-based news story and I can't see you. As usual before a big summer movie, Marvel has released a new mobile game to get fans excited for the upcoming release. But what I'm really excited about is the fact that Marvel published the game itself (instead of outsourcingit toGameloft) without the usual free-to-play trappings.

If you've got one of those shiny new Android Wear watches to fiddle around with, you've probably noticed the sad state of custom watch faces. There are a few already in the Play Store, but they often don't work right. Google has finally provided an update for developers on what they should do about custom watch faces. Basically – don't make them yet.

All the custom watch faces we have right now are basically hacks that are using workarounds to show you the time.

Around these parts, we like our gadgets. Unfortunately, accumulating a couple of them leaves us regularly in need of juice. Power outlets become scarce after stepping outside the house, which is why it's worth picking up an external battery pack or two. Currently you can get an Anker Astro E5 15,000mAh battery pack for $49.99 from Amazon, but with a coupon code, you can bring that down to $35.99.

This external battery comes with two USB ports (5V/2A and 5V/1A), so you can charge two devices at once.

Every major corporation has to fire people at some point. But Microsoft's plan to eliminate 18,000 jobs this year is, to say the least, a big deal. The company announced its plans on a blog post titled "Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture," written by new CEO Satya Nadella. Former Nokia employees will bear the brunt of this downsize, with 12,500 office and factory workers from the Finnish phone giant being laid off.

There once was an app called Flayvr, and it did okay. Then one day, the developers decided it should work differently, so they gave it a new name and design, and it magically became MyRoll. And they all lived happily ever after. The End. Oh, but the app is available in the Play Store, and it does stuff.

For the biggest of the big manufacturers, loaning out the name of your flagship model to smaller and cheaper phones is a no-brainer. You get potential customers who want the look and at least some of the features of the newest, coolest device, and you also get to reap the rewards of your brand marketing. So it is with Samsung and HTC's various "Mini" models, and now, LG's G3 Beat. Hey, at least they're not trying to call a 5-inch phone "mini."

The G3 Beat downgrades the best-in-class spec sheet of the full-sized G3 with a 5-inch, 720p LCD screen, a 1.2Ghz Snapdragon 400 processor, a mere 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot.

Google I/O was pretty amazing this year, right? We got the deets on Material design, a preview version of Android L, the formal release of Android Wear, the first manifestations of Android TV and Android Auto, and plenty of other bits and pieces. However, all of that content and all of those developer sessions can take forever to absorb, and professional developers just don't have time for that. Now that all of the videos have been posted, I've combed through every last one to narrow the list down to just the sessions that absolutely can't be missed.

Here's the scenario: you're trying to explain something over the phone to your mom, coworker, friend, roommate, or some other person and they just don't get it. This can push even the most docile human being into a fit of frustrated rage, but now there's a solution. It's called Clarisketch, and it's so brilliant I'm not sure why no one thought of it before.

The concept is simple: take a picture, draw on it while recording a voiceover, then share it with the aforementioned bonehead.